Modern heavy-ion collision simulations consist of multiple stages, starting with an initial state model, through relativistic viscous hydrodynamics utilizing a chosen EOS to describe the bulk behavior of QGP from thermalization until particlization, and ending with a hadronic transport code [1]}, [2]}. Notably, with a few exceptions (see
e.g. [3]}), hadronic afterburners typically neglect hadronic potentials, which means that the role of many-body interactions in the hadronic stage is largely unexplored. This raises the possibility that transport simulations may be missing effects likely to become increasingly important at higher baryon densities, where both the mean-field effects and the time that the system spends in a hadronic state are substantial. In particular, mean-field hadronic interactions may significantly influence the system's evolution, including the diffusion dynamics which is a relevant factor in the propagation of signals for the existence of the critical point [4]}.
